I'm Not Saying You're A Ghost (Just Stop Haunting Me)
by Skyelah
Summary: Ghosts appear in many different forms and, good or bad, they haunt us. The Avengers are no exception to this rule; their ghosts are the very thing that drives them, and also the only thing with the power to destroy them. This gets dark. There is hurt, no comfort. You've been warned.


_Title: I'm Not Saying You're A Ghost (Just Stop Haunting Me)_

_Author: Skyelah_

_Word Count: 8,169_

_Summary: Ghosts appear in many different forms and, good or bad, they haunt us. The Avengers are no exception to this rule; their ghosts are the very thing that drives them, and also the only thing with the power to destroy them._

_*Guys, I wrote a story and it's really dark. Trigger warnings for suicide, forced abortion, physical and emotional abuse, neglectful parenting and a whole lot of other issues. I'm serious. Read at your own peril.*_

* * *

Ghosts appear in many different forms.

It's not always a bad thing; ghosts can be what drive us, what move us forward in our lives. They appear as someone we loved, teaching us to love again. Someone we've lost, helping us to start anew. A feeling, a song from days long past, a memory that resurfaces suddenly, just at the moment when we need it the most. They haunt us in the best way possible; pushing us to take the next step, inspiring us to make a dramatic change or a little one, even reminding us of the mistakes we've made.

They remind us of the mistakes we've made...

Every person we've hurt, knocking away in the backs of our heads. Every person who's ever hurt us, showing up suddenly at our door. A phantom pain, an old photograph, seeing someone on the street with the same nose, same hair, same _face _as the very person we thought we'd never see again. Sometimes the person we hoped and prayed to never see again. A phantasm, a memory that plagues us and drives us insane until we can't breathe, can't think, can't do anything but plead, _dear God, let this be the end of it_.

Good or bad, our ghosts haunt us.

Tony Stark sees the ghost of his father.

Ghost is an apt description for Howard's role in Tony's life, even before the accident. He's a background figure, the idea of _father_, nothing but the face of an abstract notion Tony cannot quantify. He's never been _fathered_, per say; reprimanded and tossed unceremoniously out of the workshop, yes. Sent to his room during a party, consistently. Ignored in favour of a glass of drink, belittled when he shows Howard his first engine built from scrap materials, shouted at when he turns in a bad grade in the hopes that this will _finally _earn his father's attention.

Tony is six years old when he stops calling him 'Dad' and starts calling him 'Howard' instead.

He is eleven when he first refers to him as 'that fucking bastard'.

By the time he's fifteen, already attending at MIT, he doesn't even mention Howard's name.

It's not that Howard was ever physically abusive towards him. It's just that, from the day he was born, Tony was in competition with his father's own ghost; Steve Rogers, the great Captain America. The First Avenger. The one man that Howard could never stop hoping for, and the one man who Tony, for all his innocence and brilliance and determination, could never hope to compete with.

When Tony's seventeen, Howard and Maria die tragically in a car accident. _Tragically_, is what all of the papers and newsreels say. A _tragic _accident, leaving behind their orphaned son. At the funeral, strangers come up to Tony and shake his hand, offering him condolences they don't really mean and sharing stories about his father they've almost certainly made up. Tony can't comprehend Howard as a man who cared about anyone beyond himself. No one mentions Maria, whose death, in Tony's mind, is the real _tragedy _here.

Tony can't be rid of Howard, even after he's gone. If he's caught gallivanting around the city, a prostitute on each arm and a cigarette hanging from his lips; would _Howard _have approved of this behaviour? When, at twenty-one, he takes over the company; _Howard _would have been so proud. Every weapon he builds, every new ad campaign or product he releases; is this the direction that _Howard _would have taken the company? He can't get rid of the ghost of his fucking father, and for all his pretending not to care, it drives him off the deep end.

There are flashes of sunlight and sounds of gunfire and Howard is ignoring him again, shouting for his wife, demanding _Maria, can't your control your fucking son? What the hell are you doing in here? Get out, I'm working. _There is water and pain and someone screams and it might be him or it might be Pepper but his father is there pressing a glass of whisky into his hand _Don't be a pansy, son, just drink _and it burns and his chest hurts so fucking much-

The Ironman suit is ready, and Tony knows the designs are as good as they're going to get in these conditions, but he still checks everything over one last time. His father again, causing him to doubt his work and second-guess himself. The suit works, everything works, but Yinsen still dies and Tony blames himself. He doesn't even get to apologize either; he barely get to say goodbye. But he manages a thank you, and he hopes that it's enough.

Obadiah betrays him, and yet it doesn't hurt as much as Tony thought it would. Obie was a father-figure in his life, and yet, looking at his predecessor, at Howard, it wasn't saying much. You couldn't trust fathers, Tony decides, because all they do is disappoint you and tear your heart out. Fucking literally. He shoves the old arc reactor into his chest, and Rhodey finds Tony maybe a moment too late, but it's enough to know that someone is there. Tony knows that Obie has to die, and yet he can't quite bring himself to do it. He can't bring himself to kill Howard's best friend, and Howard's ghost is still there with him. Pepper pushes the button.

He puts on a good show and he still drinks too much and he's in love with Pepper but he can't bring himself to say it. Love, it seems, is never enough; he watches his father on screen telling him he's his greatest creation but it's just words, fucking words, with nothing to back them up. The words don't mean shit unless you can prove them, so Tony holds off, waiting until he can prove his honesty to Pepper before he tells her he loves her. He even cooks for her, and for fucks sake, if that's not love he doesn't know what is.

He meets Steve Rogers shortly after they wake him up, and damn if that isn't a disappointment. Not the man himself – Steve is every bit the straight-laced, honorable and admirable guy that Howard made him out to be. He's everything Tony's not, and that's just the problem. Because Tony thought that maybe, just maybe, if he could look Howard's ghost in the eye and realize that he is better than the man Howard couldn't rid himself of, then maybe Howard would finally let him go. But he couldn't, and his ghost is still there, filling Tony's mind with feelings of inadequacy and filling his mouth with spiteful, sarcastic remarks that inspire the Captain's loathing.

He makes love to Pepper and does his best to remember birthdays and allergies, and for now, that's enough. He whispers his love into her skin at night and tries to cook again and, even if he can't always say it in words, she knows he loves her. She doesn't need to prove anything to him; she's looked after him from day one, and she's stayed with him through more than he'd care to admit. This is the one thing he's got right in his life, Tony realizes, and when he's with Pepper, Howard's ghost can't touch him.

He talks to Steve and apologies are spoken, and while they're still just words, they're headed in a better direction. Steve is still a daily reminder that Tony wasn't, isn't, good enough for Howard, and he doesn't know if he'll ever be able to forgive the Captain for that. But he tries to see the man through new eyes, not his father's, and comes to the conclusion that maybe he's not all that bad. And maybe Howard was right to search for him all those years.

There are days that are worse than others, when he can't breathe again and he clutches where the arc reactor used to be and everything hurts and Howard's voice is grating against his skin. He locks himself away in the workshop and doesn't come out for days, not for food or company or Pepper. He invents until he feels he's done enough, creates until he can tell himself that he's proved Howard wrong and yes, he is worth something. He leaves and goes back to loving Pepper and saving the world and trying to leave behind his father's ghost.

He tries, every fucking day. He never succeeds.

* * *

Steve Rogers is haunted by the ghost of his past, by Bucky Barnes.

Steve's not a healthy child, not in the slightest, but he has the brightest face. He smiles at the ladies as they pass him on the streets, earns a few pats on the head and a sweet, always receives a smile in return. His first kiss is from old Mrs. DiCesares, a little Italian widow who bakes pies and kisses the side of his mouth when he tells her she looks beautiful that morning. He hands her the daily paper and she hands him a meat pie and he runs home to tell his mother, bearing the red lip marks proudly on his cheek.

Sarah Rogers is, in Steve's opinion, the prettiest woman in the world. She had a round face and thin hands and she's always warm. She makes him soup, little more than watered down broth, when he's coughing and bed-ridden again and saves the money he makes on his paper route to buy him pencils and paper, even when there's little to spare that year. She'll sing to him at night, holding a cold cloth to his face until his fever goes down and she'll tell stories about knights and battles and the days before the depression. Some days, she'll tell him about his father, a man who left to go to war and never really came back. Who died when Steve was too small to remember him.

Sarah Rogers dies in her sleep when Steve is just turned eight years old. She gets sick and can't shake it, and they come and put Steve in a home for boys. The first night, he sneaks out and runs home to get his pencils, his mother's scarf, his father's watch. He's caught later and punished for it and he cries, but knows it was worth it. He's not sorry. He wraps the watch in the scarf and hides it, somewhere none of the other boys or the nuns will look. He keeps the pencils with him.

He's still so small, and still so sick, and the other boys know an easy target when they see one. They pinch him during mass and he cries out; they laugh when Sister Mary-Christina punishes him for it. He doesn't tell on them, though. He still smiles at the old ladies on the street and they still smile back and hand him sweets, but now the older boys take them away from him and he can't remember what it even tastes like any more. He misses his mother.

He's nine years old and it's late and he's out past curfew, but it's his birthday and they're lighting fireworks in Central Park. If he sits in just the right spot and cranes his neck at the right angle, he can just glimpse the small explosions of colour in the sky. His mother used to take him up to the roof and tell him that the fireworks were all for him and he believed her. He knows better now, but he still likes to think that, on some level, the right display of lights is meant for him. That someone out there is happy he was born, wants to celebrate this day with him. That someone still cares.

The boys find him outside on the orphanage step the next morning and drag him into the back alley. They kick him and punch him and he hits back and then, out of nowhere, _he _appears. And he's bigger than Steve but he doesn't want to hurt him; he stands in front of the much smaller boy and pushes the bullies off. He helps Steve to his feet and says _My name's Bucky _and Steve says _That's a strange name _and Bucky just laughs because that's the thanks he gets for saving Steve.

Bucky sort of adopts Steve after that, and he never leaves his side. He takes Sarah's place at Steve's sickbed and he holds the cold cloth and barters with the apothecary for medicine and lets Steve sketch his face. Bucky has a nice face, and Steve tells him so and Bucky just laughs, the laugh he usually saves for Steve. They're the same age and Bucky is an orphan too and Steve wonders how he ever missed him before.

They leave when they're sixteen, and Steve half expects Bucky to leave him. Bucky only smiles and asks _What would you do without me, punk?_ and suddenly they have an apartment together. They work odd jobs and pay the bills late, but they're together and still laughing and still smiling and they take care of one another. Bucky brings girls home and Steve doesn't care, because they all leave in the morning anyways. Bucky is his best friend, and nothing can ever take that away from him.

Then the war starts, and Bucky enlists, and Steve tries but can't follow him. He's too small and too sickly and Bucky tells Steve that it doesn't matter because he still loves Steve's ugly mug but Steve can't help but think that it does. Then Bucky's gone and Steve's alone in the apartment with the memory of Bucky's laugh and he leaves for the training camp that Doctor Erksine enlisted him in and he hopes and prays that he'll be the one they choose, even though he can't imagine why they ever would.

He meets Peggy Carter and her lips are as red as old Mrs. DiCesares' and he wonders what she would taste like. Bucky talked to him about the girls he'd kissed sometimes, and said they were all soft and tasted like springtime, but Steve can't imagine Peggy like that. Then Bucky is laughing in his head again and teasing him for being hung up on this one dame, finally, and he can't think about Peggy anymore because he misses his best friend.

The procedure hurts, so damn much, but when it's over he's taller and he can breathe and run and he can go after Bucky. He's so much stronger and so ready to fight, but then they put him in a costume and make him dance onstage and he's like one of the monkey's he and Bucky saw at the circus, that one time they could afford to go. He reads his script and lifts motorcycles over his head and he tells himself that he's doing something for his country, but he's not looking for Bucky and that's not enough.

Colonel Phillips tells him that the 107th was decimated and Bucky was reported missing in action and Steve's heart stops. He jumps out of a plane into enemy territory and he breaks into a HYRDA facility and he should be terrified, but he not because _Bucky _is in there and he has to be alive. He all but carries his best friend out of there and everything is exploding around him but he can't help but smile when Bucky screams _No, not without you _because it means that he still cares.

They become the Howling Commandos and Bucky says he'll follow Steve anywhere, and Steve knows it's true. He never has to question the loyalty of the others but with Bucky, Steve just _knows_. He follows orders, not out of a sense of duty but because he genuinely wants to, genuinely believes that Steve knows what is best, and he'd do anything for him. They are a part of a team but there's still moments when it's just the two of them and they can smile and Steve can draw Bucky's face and Bucky still laughs that special laugh he reserves for Steve.

He can't reach him in time.

He's empty and broken and hurting; it hurts worse than the procedure that made him into Captain America, because he can't grit his teeth and deal with this. He just can't. He throws a bottle of useless alcohol against the wall and hears Bucky's laugh again and again, shaming him for wasting the good stuff and it's like he's ninety pounds and asthmatic again because he can't breathe and he cries and he just wishes he could curl up somewhere and die. There's no one left to care, because Bucky's dead and he can't imagine life without him.

He grits his teeth and deals with it. But he doesn't smile, and he doesn't laugh and the rest of the Commandos find his sketching pencils broken outside of his tent one night. He takes risks, never stupid ones, but not always necessary, and he charges HYDRA's main bases and doesn't care if he dies. He tells Peggy he has no other choice, that he has to put the plane in the water, but deep down he knows that he does, he could eject at the last possible moment, he just doesn't want to and he's so sorry, sorry he'll never be able to give Peggy that dance, sorry th-

...

It's dark, and it's cold, and he sleeps.

...

He wakes up and there's a ball game playing and a nurse telling him that the war is over and Steve is just so angry because he went to that game, and Bucky was there and they laughed and Bucky's laugh is in his head now and he can't get it out. He's running and the streets are too loud and the lights too bright and he's woken up in the wrong century and now he'll never get Bucky back. All he has left is a few sketches saved from the command tent, and the memory of a laugh that haunts him.

The future is different than he ever imagined it, probably because when he was younger, he always imagined Bucky in his. He has a new team now, and they fight together and they save the world. Steve finds himself smiling again, if only for an instant, and in that moment he hates himself because if he's happy, that means he's forgotten his pain, forgotten Bucky and he can't do that to his best friend. He doesn't deserve to be happy at that expense. And so Bucky haunts him, day after day, and Steve runs and he runs – _On your left _– but he can't escape Bucky's laughter in his mind.

He has a new mission, and they tell him HYDRA's asset is named the Winter Soldier.

They tell him he's a ghost.

* * *

Natasha Romanov feels the ghost of what might have been.

She doesn't remember where she was born, doesn't remember being young, but she knows she must have been. The Red Room may have created the Black Widow, but the red-haired girl existed before, in a time and a place so long ago and far away that Natasha cannot bring herself to recall. She remembers dancing, twirling round and round with the ceiling spinning above her and strong arms lifting her up high, throwing her into the air. A man's voice laughs deeply, and a woman chastises the man for playing so roughly with the child and it's all Natasha has of her parents. It is all she remembers.

She also remembers this; the chair, slick with her own terrified sweat but she doesn't feel fear she is not afraid she cannot feel fear... Electricity courses through her body and every muscle, every cell screams with tortured agony and her mind screams at the blank whiteness that threatens to overcome it and then she doesn't remember anything at all. The laughter stays and sometimes she wonders if the memories are actually real, or if they were planted to remind the Widow of what she had lost. To remind her of what they had taken, what they would take, if she ever disobeyed them.

She doesn't even know her real name.

She is seventeen and she is beautiful and she is deadly. She has killed 37 men, several women and a number of children that she did not bother to count, because it made her sick. Not that she would ever admit to feeling guilt or regret, because then she would be faced with the chair, and the Widow has not sat in the chair for years. She has not failed a mission in just as long. She does her job and she does it well, leaving no evidence to be traced back to the Red Room.

She is seventeen and they have another mission for her. It is typical of her assignments these days: locate the target, observe him, seduce him, learn what she can and then eliminate him. They do not prescribe a method; the Widow works best when left alone to her own deadly efficiency, her own devices. She weaves webs so subtle and yet so entrancing that a mark cannot hope to escape them. This man will be no different than the others.

She lures him in and they are alone; he has buried himself deep into her and she gasps in artificial pleasure – no mark has drawn the real thing from her yet. She croons encouragements in his ear and he thrusts harder, burrowing her deeper into the sheets and she is tempted to end it right there. But she does not have the information she needs, and waits until he is spent, rolling limp off of her and entirely compliant to her demands. He tells her everything and she smiles as she slits his throat.

She returns and is not applauded, because success is to be expected from the Widow, never praised. Weeks pass and another assignment comes and goes, and she is injured taking down her mark. Nothing severe, a bullet graze against her thigh, the owner of the weapon that fired it having since been forced to swallow his own gun, but her handlers are not pleased and she is to report to the medical staff. They run their tests and despite their best efforts, the Red Room could not have torn enough of the girl away from their asset to prevent her reaction to the news.

She is pregnant.

The Red Room will not stand for it, of course; she is their best asset. She wants to live. She allows the Red Rooms physicians to put her under and she feels nothing during the procedure, yet afterwards when she is alone she feels hollow. She is empty and she is broken and she had never before allowed herself to hope for a life beyond the Red Room, yet for a moment she caught a glimpse of what a future without them might be like. A future they took from her in a matter of moments, with sharp instruments and eyes as empty as she was. A tear escapes her. She does not remember the last time she cried.

She escapes the hold of her creators, and makes a name for herself on her own. She murders drug lords and child molesters and hunts down every last member of the Red Room and kills them with her bare hands. She looks them in the eye as she does it; she wants to see their gaze as empty as she feels, she wants to watch the hope leave their eyes as it surely did hers, but instead of bringing her satisfaction, the faces haunt her. The dead eyed stares follow her and every time the Widow looks in the mirror she sees the same haunted gaze reflected back at her.

Her kills lose their meaning. There is no more poetic justice, no justice of any kind – she kills where there is money to be made and she doesn't stop to consider the consequence. She doesn't care anymore, she wants to die. She cannot live in a world without hope – sentiment, her mind scoffs, but her heart, which she might have sworn never beat in her chest, longs for hope and for a future that had been taken from her.

SHIELD finds her, and Agent Barton, alias Hawkeye, takes her by the hand and leads her out of the pitiful life she had dug for herself, but Natasha Romanov never quite recovers hope. She cannot have children, they tell her, she never will and despite the good prospects for her career, she has lost all hope for her own future. She continues to lie and kill in the service of liars and killers, only this time they tell her they are the good guys and she believes them, but she doesn't allow herself to hope.

Agent Barton becomes Barton, and then simply Clint and they are friends and sometimes they are more than that, but she doesn't hope for the future. Hope can be crushed. Hope can be extinguished. A life can be extinguished so easily, and a tear falls and there is no future for the Widow, nothing that can sustain the life she leads.

She wonders if she would have had a daughter. She wonders if Clint, or whoever the father may have been but in her mind it's always Clint, throwing the child into the air and her red hair flashes in the sun and the child laughs and Clint laughs with her and Natasha chastises them both but really, she doesn't mean it. Her daughter would have been a dancer, just like her mother. She would have been beautiful, and life would have been perfect.

But life isn't, and Natasha is left with a nameless memory, the ghost of a hope that will never be lived, that can never see the light of day. A life burnt out and a phantasm remaining in the hollows of Natasha's empty heart.

Her name was Nadya.

* * *

Clint Barton's dreams are stalked by the family he lost.

Barney was 6 years older and his little brother was his entire world. He fed the baby, held him at night when Mom was asleep and Father was out drinking, was there for Clint's first words, first steps, the first time Father lashed out and struck the struggling toddler as he screamed and cried and begged his older brother to intervene...

Clint doesn't remember this, but he's sure his brother must have done what he had asked. Must have come between the inebriated, violent man and his youngest child, because Barney was his older brother. His protector. The one who taught him how to read, though he stumbled over the words himself, who taught Clint how to palm a candy bar off the corner store shelf and to run, run as fast as he could and not look back, whenever they were caught. If Clint was Barney's whole world, then Barney was Clint's.

Barney walks Clint to the door of his kindergarten class and pulls his sleeves down over the bruises covering his arms and warns Clint not to tell the adults before he runs to his own homeroom. And Clint never tells, because he trusts Barney and he doesn't trust the adults, not even his teacher who smiles at him kindly and lets him play with blocks and doesn't complain too often when he climbs to a perch on top of the tower he has built. Barney says don't tell the adults, so Clint doesn't even when his arms are sore and his head is fuzzy from hitting the kitchen tile one too many times. Clint trusts Barney with his life.

There is a car crash and the police say it was a horrible accident but Clint knows his Father had been drinking and his mother had been too scared to take the wheel. His belongings all fit into one garbage bag; though Barney insists Clint use some of his own bag to pack his comic book collection. It doesn't matter in the least, because at the temporary home they are sent to another boy steals the whole lot and Clint threatens to tell but the boy pinches him hard enough to leave a bruise and Clint is scared. He doesn't tell Barney, pretends he doesn't care but secretly wishes Captain America would come out of the pages of his book to scare the bullies away and to keep him and Barney safe.

They run away together, Barney with Clint's arm tight in his hand and the lights of Carson's Carnival bright and glistening on the horizon. Barney mucks stalls and Clint is too young to do any hard labour so they put him to work washing dishes and running messages between the carnival performers. He's to take a message to the Swordsman when he spies the bow and he picks it up and it feels so good between his fingers. He is found and he is punished, but he does not forget the feeling of oiled wood gripped in his hand and that night he dreams of flying.

He shoots in secret, and he is good, very good. The Swordsman's catches him one night and Clint expects to be punished and braces for a blow that never comes. They tell him he has a natural talent, something that cannot be taught and the Swordsman and Trick Shot put him to work and so he is shooting through flaming hoops from the back of a running horse and he is invincible, the Amazing Hawkeye and he forgets about Barney, watching from the shadows.

Barney is still there, mucking stalls in the background and he is still Clint's brother but Clint has never been applauded before, never really been praised and it goes to his head and Barney becomes little more than a ghost in the background of Clint's life, a relic from his horrible past that has no place amongst the bright lights and flames and death defying wonders that have become a part of Clint's norm.

It hurts when his mentors betray him, and not just because he's left with a knife in his gut and his blood spilling over the straw covering the floor of his tent. It hurts when it heals and Barney isn't there; instead he's reprimanding Clint for betraying his mentor, for doing the right thing in spite of his loyalties and _You had everything, Clint, you had a future and I had nothing and you just through it all away you're such a fucking idiot_. Barney hits him and in that moment, he is so like their Father that Clint is afraid and he runs. And he never stops.

He takes jobs where he can and he kills people for money with the bow he stole from the carnival and all the while Barney's voice tells him he ruined everything. He steals food and breaks into empty apartments and Barney is there, threatening to betray him to Trick Shot, to Father, to hit him again and Clint can barely breathe. His arrow tips are stained in red but he has to retrieve every last one because he won't lose another relic from his past, not like he lost Barney. His family.

He knows he is about to die when the SHIELD agent stares at him coldly from behind the barrel of the gun, and Clint can't help his smile. _Do it_, he breathes, leaning forward into cold metal, his weapons clattering to the ground and Barney's voice an exasperated sigh in the back of his conscience, but the Agent doesn't. Phil Coulson takes him by the hand and helps him and Clint will never understand why he did it, until years later when Clint will have the Black Widow ready to die in his sights and do the same for her.

Barney writes, says he's enlisted in the army and he begs for Clint to follow, but Clint never returns correspondence. The letters pile up, until one letter a month becomes one ever two, then once a year, then nothing for three years until finally, they stop altogether. Clint doesn't pretend to know what that means, doesn't pretend like he has the right to give a damn whether his brother is alive or dead. He burned that bridge long ago, he destroyed what they had and it's all his fault and Barney can never forgive him, not really, and Clint can never forgive himself.

When he dreams, his dreams become nightmares and it always begins with his Fathers face and it always morphs into Barney and they're both dead, Clint is sure they must be dead but their words reach forward through time _you're not enough never enough you killed me Clint why are you always such a fucking screw up _and it's his own voice now and he's screaming until his throat is raw and when nobody comes to comfort him, he knows that's his own fault.

He doesn't deserve to be happy, not with what he's done in his life and he feels it's true with everything he's done, with all of his heart – _You have a heart _– he's numb inside and not thinking is such a relief. It's bliss and that scares him, because he doesn't care what he's done, not really and that scares him even more, because he's just like his father in that regard, he hurts what he touches and doesn't feel the pain, doesn't feel any regret until all at once, he does.

He's lost everything he has, the only family he's ever known – His mother, his father, Barney, Coulson... He kills everything he touches, and it haunts him.

He is his father's son.

* * *

Thor's ghost appears every time he looks in the mirror.

He has heard tell he was the perfect babe. Strong as an ox, with good, hearty lungs that drew breath from the world and let loose fearsome cries as he came into being. Perfect and golden, he was held to his mother's breast while his father looked on proudly, declaring that it be known throughout the kingdom that an Odinson was born this day, an heir to the throne of Asgard and the hope for all the Nine Realms. His name was to be Thor, and he would wield a might like no other. So Odin declared it, and so it was. Thor Odinson was to be the mightiest warrior in all the realms.

He walked his first steps scarcely a day after the celebrations of his first, and it was known that he was strong. When he cried, the air rumbled with thunder and rain drizzled from the heavens, and it became known that he was powerful. When he reached his fourth year, he slipped past the guards watch into the armoury and was found shortly after, hoisting a blade in front of him with arms barely strong enough to lift it, the whole kingdom knew he would be a fighter. And when his mother drew him aside quietly and showed him a green eyed babe swaddled in white cloth, declaring his name to be Loki, Thor swore loudly for all to hear that the new babe was his brother, a prince, and so not to harmed by any enemy. So it was hoped that the boy would grow to be kind.

Upon reflection, Thor was not kind. He loved his brother in his own right, and was always the first to walk the child, to reach for him heavy tomes in the library, and to laugh at Loki's quick tongue and even quicker yet. Yet he was superior to the younger prince, in his mind, and he made sure it was known. He boasted in the training yards, he laughed when his brother failed to master a sword, and he mocked him for turning to spell craft – _women's tricks_, he had scoffed. He swore to hunt down Asgard's enemies and slay them all. He thought himself invincible, as children are like to do. He thought his brother's awe of him to be secure.

He thought wrong, but he would not see.

He fell to Midgard, and here is where Thor sees his ghost begin to take form. Because trapped in his mortal form. Thor knows he is not strong, nor powerful, nor a brilliant warrior. He cannot fulfill the expectations that his life as prince of Asgard had laid before him, and he does not know what to do. He is angry, but still proud, still convinced of his birthright, or his right to rule and to dominate and to hold the Nine Realms at his mercy with the power of Mjolnir.

His falls this time is much shorter, but it hurts exponentially more. His knees are stained in the mud of the realm that imprisons him, and his hands fall to his side, useless – for what use are a warrior's hands when they cannot lift his weapon – and he lets himself be taken. Loki is there and he still holds to the belief that he is loved by his brother, that their boyhood affection is secure, and so he believes him when he says that all Thor claimed as his birthright is gone. He is left with nothing.

Thor knows he is not strong. He is not powerful, and he is not the great warrior he dreamed of becoming. He is a broken shell of a man, for that is what he is now, a mere man. His birthright taunts him, a memory and a past that he can never return to, and Thor wonders, what is he to do now? What becomes of a man when all that he was has faded into shadow?

They had hoped, when he was young, that Thor would grow up to be good, to be loving. This is all he has left. This, he can do. He takes Jane Foster in his arms and shows her the stars, and her face lights up in a way that puts the beauty of Yggradsil to shame. He looks into Jane Foster's eyes and sees entire worlds, whole kingdoms, and he begins to understand what it truly means to be a king. He is no longer strong of body, but exile has strengthened his heart.

It is this strength that allows him to face his brother Loki, and to break the Bifrost, severing himself from his Jane. He knows that his love is strong enough to weather distance and time and he needs time to mourn his brother, lost to the stars. He needs time to mourn his own self, lost in the past and the new man he is becoming. At least, he hopes.

And yet, as he dawns his armour, as he hoists Mjolnir to wield it against his enemies once more, he is afraid. He is Thor, beloved of Jane and defender of Midgard and its peoples, but he is still Odinson, still a king by birthright if he would reach out and reclaim his power. If he would abandon the new man he has become and revert to the ghost of a man he once was. He is afraid because he is tempted. And because it would be so easy.

It would be so easy to cast aside his new skin, to forget the face of Jane Foster and Darcy Lewis and Eric Selvig and his new friends made on Midgard. It would be simple to take up Mjolnir against his foes, against his brother, to oppress Loki back down to wear he once stood, below the heel of Thor's boot. He could be strong and powerful and battle-ready once more. It would only cost him his kindness, his loving heart, and he lived for so long without that.

He looks at himself in the mirror, garbed in battle dress and tainted by the blood of his enemies, and he loathes himself. Because in his reflection he sees everything he once was, and everything he knows, deep down, he still is. This is his phantom, and he is so afraid because it is more than a spectre in his subconscious, it is a real and tangible threat, present and ready to strike.

Thor Odinson is his own ghost.

* * *

Bruce Banner's ghost is not what everyone might think.

The Other Guy, the Hulk as he has named himself, cannot truly be a ghost is Bruce's mind. The Hulk is a literal monster eating away a space in Bruce's mind. He cannot be a ghost, because he is not a phantasm or a whisper of a threat; he exists, he is a part of Bruce, and he is to be accepted. He cannot be escaped – Bruce knows this, he's tried. Bruce's ghosts are more subtle, yet still a part of the duality of his mind. These spectres, he can run from, though he never escapes them long.

Robert Bruce Banner is born on a Tuesday, and his father hates him on sight. _Monster_, he cries. _Demon spawn _and_ My fault all my fault. _He will not hold his son, he will not touch his wife, and he loathes himself, knowing that the procedures he wrought on his own body have produced this hellion, that the product of his experimentation is the devil child wrapped in his Rebecca's arms. Rebecca doesn't see, cannot understand and she sings to the babe, laughing when he laughs and cooing at the sweet innocent she has brought into the world.

Bruce is four and his Dad is drunk and his face stings before Rebecca – Mommy – pulls him away hollering _Brian, our son? How could you? _Bruce sees his Dad take a swing and he sees his mother crumple in on herself and he can see her tears as they spill out of her eyes and onto the floor. Years will pass and the memories will become hazy but Bruce will always remember the sound of his Dad's voice, thundering _This is not my fucking son! This is a monster, a torment straight out of hell, you stupid bitch! _

Bruce never stops hearing that voice, and he never stops believing what he heard.

He is five and Brian is beating him with an open fist and he throws his arms forward to catch himself on the cold floor and cuts his hand on the shards of glass from the mug he dropped and shattered. He is seven and he finds his father in the basement, muttering over pages of old notes and wondering where he could have gone so wrong. Bruce receives a split lip later that night. He is eleven and Bruce is made to watch as his father twists his mother's arm behind her back, forcing her down to her knees and-

They come and arrest his father, but it is already too late; his mother is dead and Bruce is old enough now to understand that it is all his fault. If only he were better, smarter, stronger. If only he weren't such a disappointment to his father, wasn't evil, wasn't a mistake. Then maybe Brian wouldn't have been so angry, and maybe he wouldn't have killed Bruce's mother. Bruce survives on these maybes, he imagines what might have been, and he never stops blaming himself.

He is accepted into college on a full scholarship, and he reminds himself that it isn't good enough. He graduates top of his class, but he knows he's still a failure. He gets a job as a research assistant while he works towards his Masters and then his PhD and his name is published across the top of dozens of papers, but he is a monster and a disappointment and he will never, ever be enough for his father, or for himself.

Betty is a small reprieve in his life She is beautiful and kind and smiles at Bruce as if he held the treasures of the Earth in his hands and offered them all to her. He would do it, too, if he could. She stays with him despite her father's disapproval, and he loves her all the more for it. They work together and he'll catch himself daydreaming when he should be working, doodling in the margins of his notes was he gazes at her when he should be listening to his project head. Soon, he has his own project, and it belongs to Betty's father and Bruce finds himself wanting to impress the man so that he will finally be seen as good enough, maybe even enough to ask for Betty's hand...

Bruce isn't good, he reminds himself. He is far from good; he is wicked and a failure and a broken shell of a man who doesn't deserve good things. He is a monster. Only now, the term is applied literally.

In a way, Bruce is almost grateful for the Hulk. The Hulk is a manifest of what Bruce always knew to be true of himself; a violent, senseless, demonic presence that stole life and breath and destroyed everything he touched. Like he destroyed his mother. His father's peace of mind. Betty's body, broken on the floor of the lab they had shared. The Hulk killed whatever he touched, and the Hulk was Bruce. The two could not be separated, try as Bruce might, and so while he told himself that the Hulk was a separate entity, one to be eliminated from his mind, Bruce knows that it's really just the monster within him come to fruition.

He nearly kills Betty. He is everything Brian told him he was.

Bruce runs, and his demons run with him. Only his demons are not the Hulk, but the voice in his mind that sounds suspiciously like his father, like General Ross and his own voice all rolled in to one. The one that reminds him, whenever he stops in some small village or crowded city, that he is evil, that he brings death. This spectre, this constant reminder of what he is and where he came from, keeps him running, because he doesn't want to prove himself right. He doesn't want to become the monster, even though he knows he already is one.

He fails every time. He is right, his father was right and he it's because he's so afraid of himself, not the Hulk, that he takes the gun in his hands and puts a bullet in his mouth. The Other Guy spits it out. When he recovers later, naked and in the middle of a forest miles from where he started, tears in his eyes and gun in his hand, Bruce laughs bitterly. He can't even kill himself properly. He'll never get anything right.

He tries so hard, after that, to make up for the monster living inside of him. He helps where he can and he tries to save lives to make up for the ones he's taken from others. He feels as though he's keeping score, marking down each person he helps against someone he's killed, either as Bruce or as the Other Guy. A man recovered from a fever in Ethiopia – one of the soldiers he killed back in Brazil, his arms ripped from his body. An outbreak of arsenicosis from a contaminated well in India – his father's life, the man who Bruce helped send to a mental institution and who died there some years later, Bruce was informed. Somehow, no matter how many lives he saves, he can never account for the death of his mother.

His past haunts him; his mother's death, his father's voice, and the knowledge that he, Bruce Banner, is the monster than everyone should be afraid of. He can run from his ghost, he can try to make up for the life he has stolen, but he can never truly escape.

Bruce's ghosts are his demons.

* * *

It's not always a bad thing, to be haunted. Ghosts are the driving force in our lives – we are inspired to create, to remember, to hope, to forgive, to improve, to help others. We can coexist with our phantoms, allowing them to shape us without controlling us, to drive us forward without pushing us over the edge, and to force us to remember without becoming stuck in the past and what we cannot change.

And yet...

They are a constant presence, always there, and forcing us to create when all we want is to be satisfied with what we have done; to remember when it would be less painful to forget; to hope when we know that there is nothing to hope for; to forgive even when it's at our own expense and the other should not be forgiven; to improve and yet to never be satisfied with what we are; to help others when we should first turn to help ourselves. They hurt us, they torture us, and there is no hiding from them.

Good or bad, our ghosts haunt us...

* * *

_So, yeah. I started writing, and looked up 4 hours later and this is what I had. The words just came flowing out of me, which I usually take as a sign that they were meant to be written._

_I have a lot of feelings now, though, and none of them are good ones. Except maybe pride. I'm actually quite proud of this one._

_Leave a review if it's no trouble._


End file.
